When Death Can Bring You Life
by jemetc
Summary: A grave loss dims the futures of Les Amis and the Republic. But in losing, you don't always fall. You can also rise.


When Death Can Bring You Life   
  
*Based on the characters in the novel by Victor Hugo.   
  
"Where is Enjolras?"  
  
Those three words seemed to have some power over the deafening chatter of the Musain's back room. The students' babble died down, not immediately, but not gradually either. All turned to the source of the intrusive, but important, question. "That is one fine question, Prouvaire," Courfeyrac said, his hand clapping the questioner's left shoulder. "I hope someone finds an equally beautiful answer."   
  
Jean Prouvaire inclined his head slightly away from Courfeyrac's, for his breath smelled strongly of wine. The melancholic poet shrugged. "I asked because I don't know. I've been wondering over the past hour where he might be. It's not like him to be tardy for any meeting." "He called for this meeting, the scoundrel," Bahorel, from the right corner, drawled. Evidently, he too, had more than a glass already. Jean Prouvaire slowly released himself from Courfeyrac's grip and walked to a table where his pen and paper were, next to some of Joly's medicine books. "He could not have forgotten, could have he?"  
  
"To hear someone even suggest that Enjolras could forget about a meeting called to discuss the revolution he dreams of so badly sounds like blasphemy to my ears," Combeferre remarked with half a laugh. "Prouvaire, your dwellings on the gods have muddled your brain. Never even think of Enjolras forgetting, even for an instant, the Revolution. I shudder-I tremble at the thought. Not only because it is frightening for such a man to forget one thing he cares so deeply about, but because it is so preposterous I marvel at it. Enjolras would never forget the Revolution, or the Republic."  
  
"Or any of our meetings," Courfeyrac added. Repeated Bahorel, "Especially those he organizes."  
  
"He seems to have forgotten this one though," Lesgles murmured, looking up from a rather large schoolbook he had been reading through for quite some time. "And I can hardly begin to imagine why." "You speak of him as if he were a god!" Grantaire exclaimed. His lip trembled with his hand as he spoke, and the wine from his tilted bottle partially spilled onto his stained shirt. "He must be out with some pretty grisette in some Paris bistro."  
  
"You always think the impossible, Grantaire," Combeferre snapped. He checked his timepiece. "Whatever your wine-filled brains may produce, it is not normal for Enjolras to be absent. If ever he would not arrive, anyhow, he would have informed us. I ought to look for him…" "Put your nose in front of your books, Combeferre, and not worry over the man. He's above twenty years of age. He knows how to walk. He'll come sooner or later." Courfeyrac poured another glass. "This is my fifth, Monsieur Bahorel. How many have you against my count?" "One less, but you started earlier," Bahorel replied. He gulped down the rest of his glass and began pouring a new one. "There-we're even."  
  
Lesgles saw some humor in this situation. "Hah," he laughed. "At least you two compete in terms of glasses. Capital R counts his drinks by the bottle."   
  
"Combeferre is right," Jean Prouvaire spoke again. "It's not like Enjolras at all."   
  
"Then why don't you two step out and let us talk and drink?" Courfeyrac raised his voice. "Enjolras, strange creature he is, has a life of his own. If he doesn't want to show up, let him do whatever he wants to do. Certainly even he must find endless debates a nuisance to the adventurous spirit!"  
  
Combeferre and Jean Prouvaire exchanged glances, but neither spoke again. Their friends were indeed too drunk or too absorbed in other business. Surely not a single one there present could let their leader's absence pass. They all knew what the Republic, and a gathering to discuss it, meant to Enjolras.  
  
~  
  
Jean Prouvaire immediately sat straight and he scanned the blurry lines of the next morning's news article as if his very life depended on it. "By God," he let the words escape from his lips as he approached the end of the writing. "By God!" he repeated, louder and stronger. "God." A silent prayer was reflected in his eyes momentarily. He threw the newspaper down on his bed and bolted for his closet. His mouth hung slightly open and his usually dreamy eyes were wide-awake and on fire as he pulled on his street clothes and ran out to the street to Feuilly's abode two blocks away.   
  
"Feuilly! For God's sake let me in!" Prouvaire pounded his fist on the apartment door and his voice shook with fear and impatience. "Open the door, let me in! Now!"  
  
Feuilly was wearing only his trousers and was holding his shirt when he opened the door, obviously risen from his sleep. "Keep your voice down, Prouvaire, my brothers are still asleep!" the fan-maker snapped. But Prouvaire was beyond that. "Have you read the paper? Have you heard the news?"  
  
"How could I, in my state…? Prouvaire, you know better than to ask such-"  
  
"Feuilly, I fear Enjolras may be dead!"  
  
Feuilly pulled Prouvaire into his quarters, hastily putting on his shirt and forcing Prouvaire to a chair. "Are you still asleep, Prouvaire? You're not drunk, are you? Sit, man, and talk to me-and pray, speak the truth!"  
  
"The paper, Feuilly," Prouvaire's voice lost its control and it trembled. "There was a story. There was a robbery last afternoon not far from the Luxembourg. A gang of thieves set their eyes on a woman and they attacked her, and tried to take her purse and all. But there was a young man-a college student- nearby, who saw it all happen. He ran over and took the bandits' blows as the woman ran away to find a police officer. But one of the thieves had a gun-the young savior was shot. He died." Prouvaire looked up at Feuilly, whose face was by now a mask of anxiety.  
  
"The young man… his name was not said, but described to be fair, with blond hair and blue eyes, and handsome… wearing black trousers, a red waistcoat and a black tie… they did not say where his body is…"   
  
"Prouvaire, there are others who could be handsome and having the same attire!"  
  
"But not all of them would single-handedly face an entire group of thugs without arms."  
  
"There are good men, Prouvaire-"  
  
"Not all of them could have been missing at around the same time the young man died."  
  
"It couldn't have been Enjolras…"   
  
"It… was Enjolras."   
  
Both Feuilly and Prouvaire turned to the new voice, that of Combeferre, who was standing morosely by the open door. "I looked for him last night, after we left the Musain. His landlady didn't know where he was. I looked everywhere, asked everywhere, until I finally decided to trust the police… I saw the body…"  
  
Jean Prouvaire's head dropped to his chest and Feuilly stared unbelievingly at Combeferre, who continued without faltering, not once, "I knew it was he. He was shot in the back, once. I spent the rest of the night lingering around, and headed here at first light. Aside from us, only Courfeyrac knows. He went to tell the others. We will bury him at noon."  
  
"His parents?"  
  
"They will not come."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"No one knows where they are."  
  
"What happened to the lady?"  
  
"She disappeared."  
  
"The bandits?"  
  
"Escaped."  
  
"Ungratefulness! He died for her!"  
  
"She was one of the bourgeoisie."  
  
"The wretched!"  
  
"Are the police searching for the thieves?"  
  
"They said they would."  
  
"Will they?"  
  
"We shall see. For now we must take his body and give the poor man a decent burial."  
  
"What sort of people are these people in the world," Jean Prouvaire sputtered, anger pushing away the grief brimming in his eyes. "When they leave their saviors to die without even thanking them, and what justice is there in this life to let such happen?"  
  
"The same people Enjolras would still have died for, and the same justice he would have tried to restore, if only he had not… died…" Feuilly murmured. The orphan turned slightly away from his friends and brought a hand to his eyes. Without looking back, he said to the world he stared at through his open window, "I have lost my blood father and my blood mother; now I have lost a friend, my brother in the Republic."  
  
~  
  
"What do we do now, that he is no longer with us…?"   
  
The question hung in the thick gloom that had engulfed the back room of the Café Musain for a week now. There was no longer lively chatter, less atrocious and sensible debates and discussions, no laughter, no jokes, no wisecracks. There was only that deafening silence and a few isolated phrases usually along the lines of "Another drink?" "What time is it?" "You've got dirt on your shirt" "How long has it been since…?"  
  
And of course, that question whose answer they all seemed to avoid speaking.   
  
There was Grantaire, still beside his wine bottle, still drinking, but dead quiet; Courfeyrac and Bahorel, silent and without sarcasm; Feuilly, Combeferre and Jean Prouvaire, wallowing in their sorrow; Joly and Lesgles, without a story about Musichetta. But there was no Enjolras. No commanding figure with angelic mystique, no fiery voice from an icy heart, no dreamer of the future, no minder of the past.   
  
But the hearts of the ideal are never permanently crushed and silent.  
  
"Has the world completely changed?"  
  
The new question from Combeferre raised a few heads, but still brought no answers. The guide of the Friends of the A-B-C stood from where he had been sitting for a week doodling meaningless things. "No," he said, a semblance of Enjolras' fire starting to become visible in his eyes. "The world outside this dark room hasn't changed. And it never will, if the very few who are willing to work for that change will simply give up because of a lost friend." His fist started to clench as he looked around the room, begging his friends to listen. "There is still oppression, poverty, misery. There are still tyrants, greedy and selfish."   
  
Then Courfeyrac, too, stood and pointed to the corner where Enjolras always placed himself with a fleeting sidways glance at Combeferre.   
  
"Enjolras was a good man-brave, noble, handsome… he may have been harsh to some of us, but he was still one of us. He is still one of us. He was noble to the end, burned by his own fire…" He sighed and dropped his arm, breaking off his eulogy to start an anthem. "Let not his death discourage us, fearing the future because of the loss of a leader. Let his death inspire us! We shall relive the Revolution of our fathers and send the message of the Republic! The flame does not die out when one ember is removed from the fireplace, even if it was the largest, most fiery ember that was taken."  
  
"Here we talk of the ideal and of justice and liberty, day by day. We talk of love for our fellowmen, love for the people. We talk of defending them from oppression and of saving them from suffering," Combeferre pointed out, "But have never done anything to prove how far would we go for them. Enjolras, who loved justice and freedom perhaps more than we here do, has already shown how greatly he loves the people. He has died for a person unknown to him, a person who forsook him, who forgot him, who did not even try to know what happened to the young man who saved her from robbers who would have killed her instead of him. Let us follow his example. Let not our hopes and ideals die with him! If Enjolras were alive, and saw us brooding, I'd stake my life on the fact that he would be angry. He would reprimand us, bark at us until we stand once more with him. Even if we ignore him, he will certainly stand alone on some deserted barricade and alone fire his rifle in the name of the future. But since he is dead, there will be no one left to wave the flag of revolution."  
  
"We will not let that happen," Feuilly declared, rising. "I would not."  
  
"Never," Jean Prouvaire joined in, as the spirits of the Friends of the A-B-C began to rise again. "For the love of liberty, for freedom, for France, the Repubic--and for Enjolras."  
  
jemima_etcetera@hotmail.com   
03/11/2002 


End file.
